HAMPTON ROADS, Va. (WAVY) — A newly-introduced bill in the Virginia General Assembly would allow the media and law enforcement to partner on a voluntary agreement to declare a child missing or endangered and allow for the public to be notified.
The ‘Codi Agreement,’ as it has been dubbed, would provide for a Codi Alert, named after missing Hampton child Codi Bigsby, when there is a missing or endangered child. It stands for the Critical Operation for a Disappeared Child Initiative Agreement.
The bill would define a missing or endangered child as one who is 17 or under, or currently enrolled in a secondary school in Virginia regardless of age whose whereabouts are unknown and whose disappearance came under suspicious circumstances, or it poses a credible threat to the child’s safety and health according to law enforcement.
The text of the bill, introduced by Hampton Republican Del. A.C. Cordoza of the 86th District, can be found here.
